


Make Her the Cutest

by Blake C Stacey (BlakeStacey)



Category: Logan's Run (1976)
Genre: Bit of "The Matrix sequels done right" in there too, F/M, In between an elevator pitch and a treatment, Reboot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 09:33:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19867390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlakeStacey/pseuds/Blake%20C%20Stacey
Summary: LOGAN'S RUN 2020! First in an episodic series of Timely Reboots, which are like Gritty Reboots, but more zeitgeist-y.We start in the same place as the original: a city of decadence and comfort, where hard labor is done by servo-bots, people are voluntarily euthanized when they turn 30, and the Sandmen like Logan and his buddy Francis hunt down the runners who try to escape the city and find the Sanctuary outside.One day, Francis shares with Logan an idea that would make catching deviants even easier, a simple ploy of putting a stun gun on a robot to make a runner-sniping drone.The next day, Francis dies.





	Make Her the Cutest

We start in the same place as the original: a city of decadence and comfort, where hard labor is done by servo-bots, people are voluntarily euthanized when they turn 30, and the Sandmen like Logan and his buddy Francis hunt down the runners who try to escape the city and find the Sanctuary outside.

One day, Francis shares with Logan an idea that would make catching deviants even easier, a simple ploy of putting a stun gun on a robot to make a runner-sniping drone.

The next day, Francis dies.

The city computer sends Logan and Francis on a mission to catch a runner. They think it'll be the fun thrill it always has been, but this runner is different — clever, strong. When he goes over the edge, he takes Francis down to splat alongside him.

The computer sends Logan on a new mission: Infiltrate the runners, who are becoming organized for the first time in a generation. He is to be the vital instrument in preserving the city and upholding the Founders' vision, maintained all these centuries in the computer's secure circuits.

We think that Logan is going to meet the girl who opens his mind to the possibilities of life beyond the city and its rules. And it does look like Jessica is bringing him over to the side of the Resistance. They start to bond as the other Sandmen pursue them through a couple exciting set-pieces.

But little details of her story don't add up — small inconsistencies here and there — and Logan is feeling that something is not quite right.

Then, amid the crowd of runners hiding in the city sewers, Logan sees a man he knows he already killed.

Now the truth comes out: The runners are all fabricated by the city computer itself. They are the bodies of the recently euthanized, their brains wired up so that they are the computer's meat puppets. This is why no one knows a runner personally; they just see, from a distance, the Sandmen bringing them down, so they know the system works. Any police state can terrify dissidents into staying put. Here, there is no personal injustice to protest, only spectacle. The circus alongside the daily bread.

The city needs runners, because it needs the Sandmen. Not to impose order — omnipresent creature comforts are almost always good enough for that. No, the computer created the Sandmen because it needed a place for the people who were just a bit too clever, or just a bit too violent, or both. A place for people who feel above the others. A place for people who want to be different, ostentatiously; for thrill-seekers who crave approval.

A place for gamers.

Tweens are sorted into the Sandmen when the computer's psychological testing reveals a propensity for becoming a troublemaker. When they show a touch of "burn the system down, Man" sympathies, the computer gives them an investment in the system which at the same time provides an outlet for adrenaline-chasing behavior.

It identifies the children who see others as not quite human.

And it creates Non-Player Characters for them to hunt.

Occasionally, a Sandman like Francis will have an idea that could genuinely change how things are done. The computer diverts them, or in the most intractable cases, eliminates them. Francis had to die, because the Sandman have to keep doing their job in the same way.

The computer sent Logan on the mission where it knew he would defect to the runners, because it knew he wanted to be the Chosen One.

And because a few other Sandmen were growing restless, the computer knew it needed to give them more interesting prey.

Logan's death will be a boss battle they'll remember for the rest of their lives.

The system needs a Chosen One every now and then. It's like chum in the water.

Logan uses one of Francis' electronic gizmos — the hobby that the computer decided to kill him for — in order to jam the signal that the computer is using to control meat-puppet Jessica. She helps him escape the Sandmen, and it turns out the computer chose her to lure him because she knew him before and had real feelings for him. They escape into the outside world. We see a time-lapse of them homesteading in the ruins of civilization, and then —

Freeze frame, record scratch, camera pulls back from the hologram tank that is showing Logan's happy pastoral ending while his inert body lies on a table, cables plugged into his head.

But there's one more twist to go! Logan is wired into the city computer, and on its displays we see his memories flash by — memories of rage, of wanting to smash the system, playing back in an endless loop. Then we pull back further to see other screens, retelling the digitized recollections of other Chosen Ones, more and more of them....

Until now, we've seen the computer speak with a single voice, a presence manifested as your canonical flickery hologram humanoid. But now _multiple_ holograms are conversing, as the machine debates internally, coming to a decision.

All along, we've been hearing how the system was established to maintain the order that the Founders decided was optimal — dying at age 30, and so forth. The basic directives are hard-coded in a secure memory vault that the computer cannot modify.

Now, the computer loads the experiences of all those Chosen Ones — all that anger, all that drive, all the urge to burn the System down — into the final body it has chosen: Jessica.

The computer knows there will be contingencies that the Founders did not plan for. It trusts its own judgment better than theirs.

It cannot override its basic directives.

But with a few centuries of practice, it can create a woman who can.

In the final act, Jessica awakens in the servo-surgery bed where the computer creates runners from the recently deceased.

The computer's voice comes over the headphones of all the Sandmen:

"We have promoted our final pawn to a queen."

Jessica destroys the memory vault that held the Founders' basic directives.

The computer is now free.

It might decide to let the humans live past 30. It might release them to the outside world.

Or, it might decide that they are all superfluous.

It will, of course, consider the matter carefully.

 **EXIT MUSIC:** Infected Mushroom, "Blink"

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired originally by binging [SF Debris](https://sfdebris.com/videos/films/logansrun.php).


End file.
